


learn a little, learn a lot

by mooncleo



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Jaskier | Dandelion, Fix-It, Immortal Jaskier | Dandelion, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Jaskier was a prince and he thinks geralt is hot, M/M, Minor Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, POV Jaskier | Dandelion, ciri is briefly mentioned, geralt is a good dad you can't convince me otherwise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:33:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22605550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mooncleo/pseuds/mooncleo
Summary: When he was 19, he met a Witcher. He’d played the Continent and learned a great deal, but he’d never written a song about a Witcher. He’d heard such stories, and wanted desperately to know if they were true. It helped, of course, that the Witcher in question was a pretty man, with pretty eyes and hair that looked like it was begging for hands in it.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 18
Kudos: 517





	learn a little, learn a lot

**Author's Note:**

> please let me know if I missed any tags, I will add them! Also Jaskier is a cinnamon roll and I love him so so much

When he was 6, he wrote his first song. It was a short little thing, and he sang it to his little sister, jumping around and screaming. She laughed (as she was wont to do when there was any attention at all on her) and clapped along with him. 

The next time he saw his mother, he tried to sing for her, but she had a glazed sort of look in her eyes and didn’t listen very well. Instead, he brought his masterpiece to his father, who scoffed and told him that nobles didn’t need to write songs. When he started to cry, his father gathered him close and told him that one day he’d have all the songs he wanted written about him. 

Looking back on it, that tune was Jaskier’s first real sentence. His family’s reactions didn’t change at the next ten rhymes he wrote, but at the 11th his father scolded him and forbid him from writing any more. 

“Julian, my boy, you know I love your little poems, but there simply isn’t room in the life of someone of such high birth as yourself for them. You will grow up to rule and every single person will love you, those who write ballads included. My boy, they will sing about you for years to come, and you will have to satisfy yourself with that. I don’t want to hear that you’ve continued to write, promise you’ll stop?” 

“Yes.” 

That was the beginning of many fibs and lies that he would tell in the years to come. 

When he was 10, his mother passed away. Julian cried at her funeral, but not for her. His father had been mourning his mother since before she died, she who was so rarely actually present no matter how solid and real she felt when Julian ran to her for comfort. Julian cried for his father, and for the end of his childhood. 

It was only two months before his father had remarried. She was a jealous woman, though not a cruel one. She didn’t want her new stepson dead, she wished him no ill will. She simply wanted more attention for herself, and couldn’t hoard it when he was around, shining brightly even when he was young. She chose to remove him from the situation. At the urging of his wife, his father sent him to boarding school to learn to rule. 

Julian learned that teachers didn’t like when you couldn’t understand the subject they tried to teach you. He learned that even if you described the way the words floated off the page and into the world around you, their dislike didn’t change. Julian learned that he was supposed to be too old to cry. He learned that the best way to get someone to understand you was to write a song. And Julian accepted all of these lessons with the grace he’d known since he was a child. 

The first time his father hit him, he had a bruise on his face for days. He revised his opinion of his new stepmother, and learned that lesson too. 

When he was 12 and in the middle of his third year at ineffective school his “parents” sent him to, his younger sister, the baby that had loved his songs when they were young and always begged for his attention when he was home, passed away. He was pulled from school and as soon as he saw the look on his father’s face he knew he could not stay. He wanted to scream and cry, but princes don’t, and so he didn’t. 

He looked over the belongings he’d packed tightly into a bag to bring home and decided that they were too much. He brought with him the clothes off his back, a lute from the music room at school that had been missing for 3 months, and as much jewelry of his mother’s and stepmother’s as he could carry. 

The streets were cold, colder than he could have imagined when he looked out at them from his room in the building he could no longer call his home. He’d started out with the goal to get as far away as possible, and ended with the goal of staying alive for the winter. He sold all of the jewels for new clothes and food and a place to stay until he’d run out of jewels and was left on the street. The only thing he had to remind him of all he’d been was a ring of his sister’s, strung on a tough leather cord around his neck. 

It was a long time, too long, before the cold passed and the first flowers started to bloom. By that time Julian Alfred Pankratz had become Jaskier, a bard that was learning to play for his keep. 

Jaskier tagged along with a band of travelers for the summer, and learned some more. He learned that people don’t suspect a brightly colored street urchin when they find their coin has slipped from their pockets, and he learned how to fly through the air from bar to bar on a trapeze. He learned that boys taste the same as girls. Above all else, he learned to hone his lies into his life. He was never a prince, he never had any siblings. He just is, a Dandelion with his lute. 

When he was 15 he left his merry little group. They were fun, but he was no child and he could no longer wave his hands and come up with a bag of coins by the end of the day. Taverns and inns let him play, and he began to earn his keep. 

He learned the best inns were full inns late at night, when people were drunk and willing to toss a pretty penny to a pretty man. He learned how to run very far very quickly when husbands came home to another in their bed. He learned that a lute with flowers painted on it made more money than a plain one, and that fine clothes garnered more coin than plain. People love a show, and Jaskier was always willing to deliver. 

When he was 19, he met a Witcher. He’d played the Continent and learned a great deal, but he’d never written a song about a Witcher. He’d heard such stories, and wanted desperately to know if they were true. It helped, of course, that the Witcher in question was a pretty man, with pretty eyes and hair that looked like it was begging for hands in it. 

His first come on flopped rather drastically, but who said he wasn’t determined? He simply tried again, making conversation this time. When the Witcher grunted, he took it as encouragement. Geralt of Rivia tried to leave the pub without him, but Jaskier was too curious to let the man go. 

After the elf ordeal, Jaskier lamented his old lute, and mentally congratulated himself on surviving. Geralt still tried to get rid of him, but if he truly wanted him gone he could have simply made that horse he’d been on go a little bit faster. Jaskier began to understand why Geralt was sitting alone in that pub they met in when they were booed out of the first three towns they entered. He started on his newest song as soon as he could. 

Several adventures later, Jaskier had learned what each of Geralt’s grunts meant, and had learned that Geralt had the sort of heart that couldn’t be reproduced artificially. Jaskier learned that the best vantage point to watch a fight was up in a tree, and that Geralt would yell at him if he got himself hurt. He learned how to patch up a Witcher with a hole in it, and that said Witcher was horrible at self care, and honestly Geralt, how were you living without me? 

When he was 26, he noticed idly that he’d stopped aging the way his father told him he might, if he took after his grandmother. He and Geralt travel on and off together, and actually find a place to sleep in most of the inns they try, and he admires his good work. Geralt does not ever thank him, but he doesn’t mind. The Witcher is a man of very few words, and Jaskier knows that he is grateful. 

Jaskier finally gets his hands on Geralt’s beautiful body that year, and they spend their nights huddled close together. Neither speak of their pasts, but sometimes when Geralt wakes in the early hours of the morning, Jaskier is there by the fire to comfort him. Sometimes, when Jaskier’s hands are restless and he wants to play his lute until his fingers bleed, Geralt lets him braid his hair. They are companionable, and when they aren’t traveling with each other Jaskier meets the Countess de Stael. Geralt meets Yennefer, and they stop for a time. 

When he is 32 years old, Geralt pushes him away. It is not the first time Jaskier has been tossed to the side by the Witcher, but it is the one that has hurt the most. Jaskier makes his own way down the mountain and thinks of the crazed look in his Witcher’s eyes. He decides that he won’t go looking for the silly man, but that he will not hold his words against him. 

By the time he has come to his conclusions, he has reached the nearest inn. He waits for Geralt to come so that they can move on, and waits in vain. He leaves after three days, finally giving up and moving on to play in another town. It is a long time before he will see Geralt again, he senses. He becomes a professor, and plays around with that for a little while, then gets bored and sets out on the road again. 

When he is 38, he sees Geralt again for the first time in 6 years, and the man has acquired a child. While he can’t be too surprised that Geralt’s Child of Surprise found her way to him, he is surprised by how attached they’ve both become to one another. Who knew that it would only take fatherhood for Geralt to be willing to openly show affection and tact? 

They have not been on the road for three days when Geralt pulls him aside and apologizes for his harsh words. Jaskier feigns shock and a courtly grace when he forgives Geralt, and the relief is palpable in the open air of the forest they’re traveling in. With a war raging on, Jaskier decides not to leave his Witcher’s side. 

When Jaskier is 54 and Ciri has grown up and the war is over and he and Geralt have settled into a cottage on the coast for a few years of much-needed vacation, he is finally happy and content. His lover is big and strong, and willing to protect him from all evil. The next time they set out, Jaskier will not need to live with a small doubt in the back of his mind that Geralt doesn’t want him there. They’re a unit now, and one would be hard pressed to separate them.

**Author's Note:**

> Geralt: Jaskier we've known each other for 35 years, right?   
> Jaskier: Yeah   
> Geralt: Aren't humans supposed to, like, age?   
> Jaskier: You r so slow, love 
> 
> Drop me a comment! Please I live off of your words. I'm on tumblr at https://bringer-of-chaos.tumblr.com/ if you care to head over and take a look. <3


End file.
